Your Lying, Vain, Obfuscative, Thieving, Wasteful, Vindictive, Corrupt, Petty Government and You

Canada is rather like a chubby girl with potential but little self-esteem. The prime ministers who run her are emotionally manipulative, abusive and conniving boyfriends who remind this girl that she can't do any better. 

But don't take my word for it:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called allegations of government officials lying to MPs about the $54 million ArriveCAN app "concerning," but has refused to comment on if he would personally cooperate with law enforcement on the matter.

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For those who’ve blissfully forgotten, GCStrategies consists of two people who subcontract IT work to teams of experts and takes a cut off the top — in this case a cut of roughly $11 million, for an app that should have cost a fraction of that, if it was to exist at all. Needless to say, that wasn’t the only fat contract GCStrategies — which, again, is two men and an address book — had received from the government over the years. Each GCStrategist made more money off ArriveCAN than I’ll likely make in my life. It makes me want to strap on a bass drum and sing The Internationale in public.

The RCMP is investigating the ArriveCAN contracts, after the founders of Montreal software firm Botler blew the whistle on alleged skulduggery — including GCStrategies inflating the Botler founders’ own experience in the app-building game in submissions to the federal government. Notably, co-founder Ritika Dutt’s two-month summer internship at Deloitte magically became 51 months of experience. And co-founder Amir Morv was said to have worked for a company — named after himself, no less — that he insists never existed.

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Dutt and Morv told the committee last month that Kristian Firth, one half of GCStrategies, would often claim to have “dirt” on government officials, and they on him — “essentially guaranteeing silence through mutually assured destruction,” as Morv put it.

Firth wavered alarmingly last month before the committee on the question of whether he ever met government officials outside of work. And there is a fascinatingly oblique question about what Firth knew and when he knew about a cottage or cabin that MacDondald owns. At one point at committee Firth denied all knowledge, but then offered a clarification for the ages: “MacDonald has never referred to it as a cottage. It’s a chalet.”

These are Adscam-level corruption allegations, albeit without an established fiduciary link to any politician or political party. (I can’t decide if that’s better or worse. One would like to think the public service was clean, even if politics isn’t.)

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“The concern that we’ve brought to the government at every level is about systemic corruption,” Dutt told the committee last month. And it’s almost comforting, if it’s true, because at least it makes sense. If rampant cronyism isn’t at play, then where on earth did that $54.5 million go? Surely to heaven that wasn’t the civil service’s honest best effort at building an app.

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It takes six months to put up a decent house in this country and there is no money for ANY of this:

The federal and provincial governments will each invest $900 million over the next four years to accelerate housing construction in Quebec, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault confirmed Thursday.

Trudeau said the deal was unique in the country because a province is matching the federal funding on offer. The provincial government had said it would match $900 million from the federal government's housing accelerator fund in an economic update Tuesday.

"When we launched the housing accelerator fund, we were clear that we needed to eliminate red tape and remove barriers," Trudeau told a news conference in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil. "This new agreement with the government of Quebec will mean more ambitious plans right across the province to build more homes faster."

The two politicians said the investment will directly create 8,000 social and affordable housing units, including 500 that will be earmarked for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

They say that in the longer term, the combined $1.8-billion commitment will contribute to helping build tens of thousands of additional homes, at a time when Canada is grappling with a housing crisis that has seen many people struggling to afford a place to live.

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The Bank of Canada’s decision to leave its key overnight interest rate at five per cent in October was driven by factors including conflict in the Middle East that risks keeping oil prices elevated and federal and provincial government spending that “could get in the way of returning inflation to target.”

The six-member Governing Council, led by central bank governor Tiff Macklem, began meeting Oct. 17 and discussed a number of concerns including the risk of inflation expectations becoming entrenched. According to a statement of deliberations released Nov. 8, they also concluded that continued wage increases at the current pace of four per cent to five per cent would be “inconsistent” with restoring price stability.

However, the central bankers also discussed signs that raising interest rates over the past year and a half was working to slow the economy and tamp down inflation.

Consumer spending has been weaker than expected, for example, with household credit growth declining “substantially” as Canadians adjust to higher borrowing costs. 

Third-quarter assessments also suggested weakness in spending on housing and durable goods with a spread to services. Meanwhile, they anticipated that exports would stall as foreign demand softened, with businesses reporting softer investment intentions due to elevated funding costs and weaker sales prospects.

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According to recent data and forecasts in a report from the C.D. Howe Institute, Canada’s relative prosperity is in steep decline, with this country’s gross domestic product per capita falling well below the average for the advanced economies that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In 1993, Canada’s real GDP per capita was 106 per cent of the OECD average. The C.D. Howe Institute forecasts that in 2024 Canada will be just 89 per cent of the average of advanced economies. Canada has also fallen compared with the United States: In 2023, this country’s GDP per capita is forecast to be less than three-quarters that of the U.S. (Those statistics are relatively generous to Canada, since the institute has adjusted them for domestic purchasing power.)

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Justin's people:

The richest people in Canada got a lot richer in 2021, even as the poorest half of all tax filers saw their incomes decline by $1,400.

That's one of the main takeaways of a new data analysis released by Statistics Canada on Friday looking at tax filings from 2021 and comparing them with the previous year.

According to the data agency, incomes of the top one per cent of all tax filers in Canada rose by 9.4 per cent to $579,100 in 2021.

The 10 per cent pay bump for the top one per cent contrasts with incomes moving in the opposite direction for many other Canadians. 

"Filers in the bottom half of the distribution saw their average total income decline $1,400 from 2020 to $21,100 in 2021," Statistics Canada said in a release on Friday. The agency said most of that decline was due to the lowering or ending of pandemic-era government programs like CERB and CEWS.

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The chair of a federal foundation last night acknowledged she voted to award her own company a $217,000 grant at taxpayers’ expense. Annette Verschuren, chair of the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology, testified at the Commons ethics committee she did not consider it improper: “I think you need a refresher on what a conflict of interest really means.”

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I recently had a chance to listen to Adam Waterous, the CEO of the Waterous Energy Fund and former Global Head of Investment Banking at Scotia Waterous. He is, I may add, an incredibly intelligent businessman who lives and breathes energy.

Waterous shared some surprising facts about EVs. For instance, he mentioned that it takes five times the amount of oil to build an EV than it does to build a conventional gas-powered vehicle. In order to offset this difference, a person must drive an EV 120,000 kms using the electrical grid; meaning, every time we build an EV, demand for oil goes up, not down. Further, an EV battery does not last the lifetime of the vehicle itself, crapping out in as little a eitght years. This expands the EV’s carbon footprint even further as producing a single EV-grade battery emits over seven tonnes of CO2 emissions. All told, an EV has roughly double the production footprint of a conventional vehicle.

Still convinced we are saving the planet?

The B.C. provincial government is forging ahead with a set of policies that, as the Business Council of British Columbia put it, “its own modelling shows will make BC’s economy $28 billion smaller in 2030″ than it would be absent these policies. (To put this number into context, this is roughly what the province spends on health care each year). This will set prosperity back more than a decade. This remarkable finding emerges from looking beyond glossy government reports to the raw modelling results of the estimated economic impact of CleanBC policies that are studiously ignored in its public communication materials.

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If there is anything that Canada needs it's an inefficiently run and expensive fire-fighting force that will have buildings and forests burn down while MPs dine on filet mignon at a conference on how to avoid last year's forest fires:

Parliament should consider federalizing firefighting after a record year for property losses, the Commons defence committee was told. Army volunteers were insufficient, said Alberta’s deputy premier: “As much as we love our armed forces they have very basic training when it comes to firefighting.”